Battling inertia 
For all my grandiose talk about going mano-a-mano against writers block, time management, and using to-do lists I still get hit by bouts of inertia. Like the bout of inertia that I’m facing now. Well, let me clarify that: this has been affecting my article writing. I’ve got a bunch of articles to finish, but I can’t seem to get the thoughts from my head through to my fingertips and on to my computer via the keyboard.
There are a lot of reasons for what’s happening. Once again, I’ve taken on more assignments that I can comfortably handle. I have to finish creating the slides and a script for a presentation; and have to finish a proposal for another presentation. And my wife has been on a bit of a renovation bing — I’m spending a lot of my free time working around the house rather than banging off articles.
Taken together, that’s sapped my energy and my will. I’m somewhat overwhelmed and that’s causing the inertia.
Luckily, I’ve been slowly gaining ground in this battle. I’m doing a little here and a little there, and I’m slowly catching up. Not quickly enough, it seems sometimes, which has been adding to the inertia whenever I do have the time and energy to do more work.
The bottom line? I’m taking a short break from posting in this space. I’ll be back in a week or two. In the meantime, why not post a comment about how you fight inertia, writer’s block, or whatever you want to call it.
Word processing, on a diet
Sometimes, using Word or OpenOffice.org Writer is overkill. Actually, it’s overkill for a lot of writing tasks. As I discuss in this article, you can do much of your work in a lightweight word processor — either on the desktop or on the Web.
What is your writing weapon of choice? Feel free to leave a comment.
Recycling your articles
Recycling isn’t just good for the environment, it can also put some money into your pocket if you write for a living. This post outlines a few ways in which you can profitably recycle your writing.
When I’ve recycled articles, I’ve either expanded the piece or ripped out and replaced sections to create a variant. On occasion, I’ve shortened articles or mashed them up with others to create something new. It doesn’t take long, and the rewards are obvious.
I have to say, though, that I definitely have to try some of the advice in that post.
Have you tried recycling articles? If so, what success have you had? Feel free to leave a comment.
Image from http://www.sxc.hu
Thought for the day
If your words aren’t truthful, the finest optically letter-spaced typography won’t help.
– Edward Tufte
Using a wiki for a simple writing project
While wiki guru Stewart Mader wrote a book using a wiki, in my experiments with a wiki as a writing tool I’ve started off small. No books (at least for now); instead, I’ve been writing articles using DokuWiki.
Another look at dealing with article ideas
As I’ve written in the past coming up with good article ideas can be tough. This blog post offers 12 tips for generating ideas for articles. Even with a good amount of advice, though, there are still problems with ideas.
To be honest, I don’t have trouble getting ideas. As you probably know, and as the post I linked to above demonstrate, ideas are just about everywhere. The problem really lies in the quality of the ideas. Some ideas are good; most are shaky at best.
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TextRoom: a full-screen editor with a twist
As you’ve probably read in this space, I enjoy using full-screen editors. They enable me to write without any distractions — I can focus on writing and not have my attention pulled away by email, RSS feeds, or anything else.
My favourite application in this category is JDarkRoom. But I’ve found a new one that’s giving JDarkRoom a run for its money: TextRoom.
Standing apart from the rest
Admittedly, TextRoom is like just about every other full-screen, minimalist editor out there. It has most of the same features — the ability to change fonts, configurable interface, autosave. all of that. I guess in this category of software, there’s little new that you can do (although, I wouldn’t mind being proved wrong1).
But TextRoom has one ability that sets it apart from other editors: TextRoom can keep you on your toes and remind you of your deadlines.
How? In the Options window (press Ctrl+P to open it), click the Targets tab. There, you can do the following:
- Set a target word count for a writing session. Say you decide that you need to write 500 words before going off to do something. Set that goal, and TextRoom will display the goal and the number of words that you need to reach that goal in the bottom left of the screen.
- Set a deadline for a particular piece of work. TextRoom will remind you about the deadline.
There’s also a timed writing feature that I haven’t figured out yet.
The drawbacks? No spelling checker (although TextRoom does maintain a running word count), and you have to save your writing as a text file. There’s an installation program for Windows users, but Linux users need to compile TextRoom. No Mac version is available yet.
Going analog
I write a lot about technology in this space. Portable devices, desktop applications, and Web tools. But sometimes you need to go old school. And that means the analog method — writing things down in a notebook.
My weapon of choice is a Moleskine notebook. Not because it’s trendy, but because Moleskines give me a combination of ruggedness and portability. They’re a bit pricey, but worth the money.
Why a physical notebook and not a laptop, my Eee PC, or even a PDA? The Moleskine fits comfortable into the pocket of a pair of pants or shorts or a jacket; none of those devices do. OK, a PDA does. While I’ve used PDAs over the years, outside of my Psion series 5 I’ve never really liked them. On top of that, there’s the risk of the device running out of power or of me damaging or losing it. I’m more comfortable losing a Moleskine than I am with losing a piece of electronics.
The great thing about carrying a small notebook around is that you can use it anywhere. On a train or bus, in an airplane, or anywhere else I can pull out my pen and notebook to:
Jot down an idea that strikes me
Sketch an outline
Record something interesting that I’ve read or heard
Write a chunk of a first draft of an article
And a lot more. It just goes to show you that doing things the old fashioned way can still be effective.
Image from http://www.sxc.hu
Staying focused
There are definitely times in the life of a freelancer when it seems that you have more work than you have time to do it. There are two sides to that situation. On the positive side, having work is exhilarating, (I hope) profitable, challenging, and a bit of an ego feed. On the negative side, having a lot of work in a compressed period is stressful and can sap your confidence if things aren’t going well.
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Tracking your submissions
Dustin Wax at The Writer’s Technology Companion has written a four-part series on software to track your submissions. He looks at a number of interesting desktop and Web-based too, along with the good, old-fashioned spreadsheet.
I’ve tried a number of the tools that Dustin mentions, and (of course) there are a couple that I’ve never touched. But I’ve always gone back to the spreadsheet. Why? It’s quick and it’s simple. The spreadsheet layout that he describes in part two of the series is a lot like the one I’ve been using for a long time now. You can download copies of my spreadsheet in Excel and OpenOffice.org Calc formats.
The main difference between my spreadsheet and the one that Dustin describes is that I don’t track payments in it. I use a separate spreadsheet for that. It’s not any more cumbersome to do that.
Over the couple of years or so, I’ve been using the spreadsheet component of Google Docs to track my submissions. It suits my sometimes mobile lifestyle — regardless of what computer I’m using, I can keep an accurate tally of what’s going out.